When Bong Joon-ho (THE HOST, MOTHER, MEMORIES OF MURDER) first opened Jean-Marc Rochette's comic "Snowpiercer" in a Seoul bookshop, he supposedly devoured all three volumes on the spot. Eight years later, the French comic has been made into the most lavish Korean film of all time, a parable on the final days of humankind. SNOWPIERCER describes an impending ice age caused by human hand, whose last survivors are left circling the earth in a nonstop express train. The rich are in the front carriages and the poor—from whose perspective the story is told—at the back.

If you walk along a moving train from back to front, you end up travelling faster than the train itself relative to the Earth. This is the dynamic force upon which Bong's film thrives: there's only one direction in which this revolt can go and it'll be doomed to failure if its speed doesn't exceed the reaction. With its impressive cast, breathtaking artificial landscapes, fantastic make-up, over-the-top décor, fresh, witty dialogue and a healthy portion of humor, Bong Joon-ho gives back to cinema what the Lumière Brothers themselves already used to impress their audiences: the sheer force of the machine. (Note courtesy of Berlin Film Festival)